The apostasy of me. Or not.

[constance]

George W. Bush was in my town today, and my mind is on politics tonight.

I won't even start talking about how quickly he can make the bile rise in my throat (it's practically a Pavlovian response by now, I would think), or how his shell-game politics leave me feeling as though my intelligence has been insulted almost beyond bearing every time he opens his goddamned mouth and at the same time questioning the intelligence of all the people who lap up every word he says the way my dog licks up cat puke if he gets to it before I can. How it's taken years of... Nope, not going to talk about it any more.

Instead, I'm going to talk about a conversation I had with my father when I was in college. I was being probably unbearable and sanctimoniously liberal about something or other, and he informed me that he'd been a liberal once too, but that time and a family and a mortgage had changed his mind. That I would change my mind, too, once I entered the real world and had adult responsibilities to face.

And tonight it's nearly twenty years down the road, and undoubtedly my father would claim that I'm maintaining an unhealthy grip on my Neverlandish talent for avoidance and idealization. But the rest of the world thinks I'm toeing the line pretty well, I thank you. I have adult responsibilities now. No marriage, nor is there likely to be one, but I have a house and a car. Pets. I pay my bills on time, all of them. I'm middle-class! I go to work and pay my taxes and contribute to my 401(k) account! Hey, I even know how to punctuate 401(k)!

But I'm still a liberal. I don't think my affiliations are going to change, either. I don't feel as though I'm closing myself off from the beliefs I once held. They've become tempered by practicality, sure, and I'm more circumspect than I used to be, but I think I'm only less hotheaded now, not more reactionary. Possibly in some ways I've become more liberal, as I've become wiser and more compassionate and less self-centered over the years.

My father wasn't even ten years older than I am now when he made that pronouncement to me. Really, don't you think that if my conversion had been going to happen at all, it would surely have started happening by now? I think my father was wrong, and I won't insult him by ranting about yellow-dog democrats and lame-ass frat boys too busy drinking to know their own minds, much though I'm tempted to do so tonight, all soured as I am by insanely listening to five minutes of GWB before turning the television off.

Instead, I'm just wondering: what about you? Have you become more conservative as the years have gone by? More liberal? Have you changed in political essentials at all, as you've left your college years behind?

Comments

[gmth.livejournal.com]

I'm much more moderate now than I was in high school and college, but since I was practically an anarchist then I think I'm fitting pretty comfortably into the liberal spectrum these days. I was also told I'd get more conservative as I got older, and it was true, but considering how far to the left I was when I was younger it's not a surprise.

And not to gloat or anything, but we had Bill Clinton in my area today. :-)

[luthien.livejournal.com]

I've always been fairly left wing. Every so often, when an election rolls around, I make a concerted effort to look at the policies of all the major parties as fairly as I can, just to see if anything's changed for me, and I always end up the same: I have always been wary of any organisation that tries to tell me how to think, churches as much as political parties, and that wariness has only grown stronger with age, but my own core values, the things I believe in most strongly, especially those to do with social justice, have also never changed. At this point, when I'm relatively middle-aged, middle-class and comfortable, those things don't look like ever changing, and so I'd say I'm never going to turn into a political conservative. It's probably partly at least because at heart I've never really been any kind of conservative, partly because my partner is more left wing than I am - those copies of the selected works of Lenin on our bookshelves don't belong to me, and I'm not the one who gets misty-eyed at memories of long-ago student cooperatives that apparently demonstrated the spirit of socialism in action *g* - and also partly because I hate the miserable little conservative who's been our prime minister for the past ten years *sob* and has been at the top of my list of least favourite politicians since 1985. That hypothetical bus can't come speeding towards him quickly enough...

My brother, who is barely two years younger than I am, otoh, has become progressively more right wing as he's become older. He's now firmly politically conservative where once he was at least as left wing as I was. Funnily enough, I am the one with the partner and the mortgage, while he's the one who's single and lacking in a lot of those worldly responsibilities that influenced your father's thinking. Of course, my brother works for a merchant bank and the world of high finance is not exactly unknown to him, so possibly that has a slight influence on the way he thinks, too. *g*

[aubrem.livejournal.com]

oh gosh, what a complicated question.

Undoubtedly I'm more conservative than I used to be but that's more in practicality than principle. My principles remain the same - I'm just a bit more wary, a bit more practical, a bit less naive.

Also, I am willing to set my principles aside for my kids at the drop of a hat - something I would never have predicted before.

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

I would say I have become more nuanced and pragmatic, but not really more conservative. I was raised in a pretty liberal environment, so I did not have any big left-wing conversion when I went off to college, and I never felt much need to thumb my nose at the establishment just to get a response, nor to embarass my family. Even as a teenager, I just wanted to do what I wanted to do, and I didn't seek to shock anybody.

A big contributing factor, I think, was that my father died when I was 13. He was a WWII veteran, and though he always voted Democrat and would have hated Bush (did hate Reagan, who had been our governor), there were a lot of specifics we would never have agreed on. But when my mom was suddenly left a single mother of three, she got politicized pretty quickly, especially about women's issues. Of course I am not happy that my mom went through hard times, but I think it has made it easier for her to understand my experiences as a single working woman and not to expect that things would work out if I were more mainstream.

Tofty, you don't say anything about your mother's politics. My observation is that sometimes tough times make men want to identify with a tough leader, and it hardens them and makes them less forgiving. But for women tough times more often lead to increased empathy and openness. As Aubrem says above, becoming a parent can change your values system in certain specific ways, especially toward feeling more protective. But for me, caring about children (in general; I don't have any of my own) means caring about fairness and free speech and equal rights and peace and affordable health care for everybody more than ever.

[laurelwood.livejournal.com]

I learned the hard way last night that one shouldn't go to bed directly after listening to Newt Gingrich talk. That, combined with the kind of fragmented sleep that comes with having a cold, makes for some apocalyptic nightmares. Kinda the way we all feel after listening to Bush, no?

On a much lighter note, my sister and I, as children, were asked by my grandfather to choose a political party. So, blindly, we chose, and I got the giant inflatable elephant and she got the giant inflatable donkey. The elephant was much cuter, so I lorded it over Julie with my superior republicanness for as long as the toy lasted. Since the toy popped, though, I've found myself becoming more liberal with every passing year, despite being married to a conservative. (At least he's not getting MORE conservative as I get more liberal. Makes for interesting dinner debates, anyway.)

[thalia]

I'm more fiscally conservative than I used to be, but I'm still toward the left of center there. Everything else, I haven't changed much, still pretty far on the left. The way the rest of the country's shifted, I think I look more liberal than I used to, even though I don't think my positions have changed.

[dahlia-777.livejournal.com]

I've moved a bit to the left over the years, but not so that it makes much difference. The big shift in my politics as I've grown older has been towards cynicism, disillusion and bitterness. I've never been able to stand the Tories, but nowadays I feel vicious contempt for most politicians in the Labour party too. I doubt this will come as a surprise to anyone like you who reads my journal!

One other thing, vaguely related, is that I've become a more convinced atheist over the years. Kay Taylor told me last week to read The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins and it was a great rec. I got it on Sunday and it's fantastic.